DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world

DistroWatch Weekly

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 163, 7 August 2006

Welcome to this year's 32nd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The Linux world is starting to heat up again after a brief break - following the first beta release of Mandriva 2007 and KDE 3.5.4 last week, a new test release of Fedora Core 6 will be out today and the third alpha build of openSUSE should appear on the download mirrors on Thursday. Besides the usual news round-up, a short article takes a look at the current status of Linux in the countries and territories of the South Pacific. Finally, with this being the first issue of DistroWatch Weekly of the new month, we are pleased to announce that the July 2006 DistroWatch donation of US$500 goes to the Blender Foundation. Happy reading!

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Miscellaneous News

New beta releases by Mandriva, Fedora and openSUSE, Ubuntu in the news

The long awaited first beta of Mandriva Linux 2007 was finally released last week. Although the Tuxmachines review of the new product concluded that it was far from stable and usable at this stage, it is becoming clear that Mandriva 2007 will be a very important release, especially from the community point of view. As the company is trying to attract more business from the corporate world, it has lost its original friendly appeal and many users have switched to other, more progressive distributions. That doesn't mean that Mandriva Linux will not play an important role in the future, but a lot depends on the quality of its long-delayed version 2007. Will it be able to produce a winner and bounce back into the consciousness of Linux enthusiasts? Let's hope so!

* * * * *

The second test release of Fedora Core 6 will be released later today. Unlike Test1, the Fedora Project's latest development build comes with full release notes, so we can get an idea of what's new. Among other things, the distribution now comes with GNOME 2.15 and a pre-release build of KDE 3.5.4, but Mozilla is no longer included in the core system. The SCIM input method is now enabled for all languages and the Eclipse IDE has been upgraded to version 3.2. There are "numerous menu, user interface, and functionality improvements" in NetworkManager, while on the printing side of things, the hplip utility replaces hpijs. An interesting improvement has been added to the Anaconda installer, which "can now be used to generate a Live CD for Kadischi." By Fedora standards this appears to be a fairly conservative release, but this is hardly surprising since it will form the basis for the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. Bring it on!

* * * * *

As has become so common these days, Ubuntu remains in the spotlight of many news sites and software magazines around the world. First to stir the Ubuntu community last week was a controversial opinion published by Free Software Magazine, which predicted the eventual death of Red Hat - thanks to Ubuntu's more desktop-oriented approach towards building a Linux distribution. Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth was quick to go on public record saying that "Red Hat’s demise is not our goal." An interesting discussion then appeared on the Ubuntu founder's personal blog. Entitled "Communicating release goals", the article by Matt Zimmerman gives a good summary of the reasons behind the many negative reviews of Ubuntu 6.06, while Mark Shuttleworth adds a few thoughts on the subject of "expectations" and "polish". It's a good, open discussion that every Ubuntu user should read to appreciate the effort that goes into producing and marketing a complex operating system. Finally, No Starch Press has published a new book about Ubuntu; entitled Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks (by Rickford Grant), the new book is a welcome addition to the growing list of publications covering this increasingly popular operating system.

* * * * *

Finally, a quick reminder and explanation about the upcoming name changes of the two Novell products. As indicated earlier, the third beta of what was until now known as SUSE Linux will be called openSUSE to differentiate the community product from Novell's commercial operating systems, i.e. SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop/Server. This is a distinction similar to what we have with Fedora and Red Hat or, more recently, Freespire and Linspire, and it seems to be a growing trend among commercial Linux companies. As a result, the content of the SUSE page on DistroWatch will be moved to a new page labelled as "opensuse", while information on the Novell page will be transferred to a page labelled "sle" or similar (if you have a better suggestions, please let us know).

Commentary

Linux in the South Pacific

South Pacific. A vast water mass stretching from Australia to Chile and dotted with mostly tiny coral islands often conjures up images of island paradise - easy, carefree life style, white beaches lined with coconut trees, and colourful marine life. Of course, that's just one side of the story. The South Pacific is also a home to real people, many of whom go through their everyday routines of work, business and survival, just like the rest of us.

But this is a Linux web site and I certainly don't intend to dwell on the magnificent beauty of exotic lands, where I had the pleasure of spending the last three weeks. Instead, I'd like to concentrate on the computing aspect of the South seas, because even though many of the countries and territories in the region have a long way to go before they become IT power houses, there are signs that Free Software is slowly penetrating into this remote area.

Unfortunately, it's a slow process. As an example, the only bank providing foreign exchange on the international airport in Vanuatu is equipped with nothing more than a large desk calculator. In the somewhat more prosperous Fiji, the airport bank did have a computer -- as well as a large desk calculator, which mysteriously stopped working just as I was being served. After numerous failed attempts to get the calculator back to working condition, the bank clerk eventually gave up and -- with a heavy sigh -- turned on his computer!

There is no denying that many of the countries and territories in the region are technological laggards. In fact, 80% of the people of Vanuatu still live the same way as they did centuries ago - engaged in subsistence agriculture and fishing, while it is believed that there are still living people who have tasted human flesh - during the county's era of cannibalism. Of course, that doesn't mean that people of Vanuatu are unhappy with their lot; on the contrary, it is the happiest place on earth. But if you are a Linux or BSD geek and expect to go there and meet people who share your interest, you'll be disappointed.

But it's not all bad news. The DistroWatch web logs are a great way to find out whether there are any clusters of Free Software enthusiasts in the region. Below is the list of South Pacific countries and territories ranked by the number of visits on the main page of DistroWatch between January and July 2006:

Rank

Country

Visits

1

French Polynesia (PF)

1922

2

New Caledonia (NC)

1320

3

Fiji (FJ)

70

4

Cook Islands (CK)

57

5

American Samoa (AS)

17

6

Samoa (WS)

12

7

Vanuatu (VU)

12

8

Solomon Islands (SB)

9

9

Tonga (TO)

8

10

Niue (NU)

4

11

Tuvalu (TV)

4

12

Walis and Futuna (WF)

4

13

Pitcairn (PN)

2

14

Tokelau (TK)

1

As we can see, it is the more prosperous territories of French Polynesia and New Caledonia that provide the bulk of our South Pacific visitors - 94% of them come from these two French-controlled territories. Cook Islands is an interesting case - we have been getting regular, almost daily visits from this tiny nation since about 3 months ago; it's nice to have a fan in those lands. Fiji, the most populous and influential of the South Pacific countries was disappointing - you'd expect more than just 10 visits per month from a country that hosts an important regional university.

Since the population figures of these countries and territories vary considerably, let's re-arrange the table to take into account the number of inhabitants in each of them, thus ranking them in terms of "visits per capita". The last column in the table below represents number of visits per month per one million inhabitants. Here, tiny Pitcairn with only 50 inhabitants gets the highest score - thanks to two visits from two separate IP addresses and on two separate dates in June.

Rank

Country

Visits

1

Pitcairn (PN)

5,830

2

French Polynesia (PF)

1,065

3

New Caledonia (NC)

907

4

Cook Islands (CK)

391

5

Niue (NU)

271

6

Tokelau (TK)

97

7

Tuvalu (TV)

51

8

American Samoa (AS)

41

9

Walis and Futuna (WF)

37

10

Fiji (FJ)

12

11

Tonga (TO)

11

12

Samoa (WS)

10

13

Vanuatu (VU)

9

14

Solomon Islands (SB)

3

For reference, USA has an index of 3,002, Australia 2,554 and Finland, the world's highest ranked country in terms of "per capita visits", 6,388.

French Polynesia and New Caledonia are also the only South Pacific territories with Linux User Groups. In French Polynesia you can find it at www.linux.pf; besides a good web site, the group also organises regular monthly meetings through LoLiTa (Logiciels Libres à Tahiti) in Pape'ete, it has a fairly active discussion forum, and it even provides a local mirror for downloading Linux distributions. Mandriva Linux seems to be the most popular distribution in Tahiti. In New Caledonia, the GULNC (Groupe des Utilisateurs de Linux en Nouvelle Calédonie) at www.linux-nc.org maintains a very active web site with a mailing list and a local FTP server.

The conclusion? If you are thinking about settling down on a South Pacific island, but would prefer a place populated with like-minded individuals who enjoy Free Software, then think Tahiti or New Caledonia.

Now, where did I put that French textbook of mine...? ;-)

Released Last Week

AliXe 0.08c

Sylvie Migneault has announced a new version of AliXe "Standard" edition, which is essentially a French edition of the popular SLAX live CD customised for use in French-speaking regions of Canada. The new version is based on the recently released SLAX 5.1.7b KillBill Edition, including the Linux kernel 2.6.16.22 and KDE desktop 3.5.3. Koffice productivity suite has been upgraded to version 1.5.2. It also supports the two most commonly used keyboard layouts in Quebec - "cf" and "multilingue". Read the announcement (in French, MD5 within) on Quebecos.com.

EnGarde Secure Linux 3.0.8

EnGarde Secure Linux has been updated to version 3.0.8: "This release includes several bug fixes and feature enhancements to the Guardian Digital WebTool, several updated packages, and several new packages... New features include: A new Italian translation of the Guardian Digital WebTool, courtesy of Vincenzo Ciaglia..." Read the full release announcement for more.

Ark Linux 2006.1

The Ark Linux team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Ark Linux 2006.1: "There have been numerous changes since the last release. Highlights include KDE 3.5.4, the current version of X.Org and amaroK 1.4.1, and a new tool, "rpmhandler", that makes installing 3rd party packages easier than ever -- and we've fixed numerous bugs, especially in the Live version." Find more on the project's web site.

Finnix 88.0

As expected, Finnix 88.0 is now available: "Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. Today marks the release of version 88.0 for the x86, PowerPC, and UML/Xen platforms. Finnix 88.0 features Linux 2.6.17, a faster, more complete hardware autodetection routine, DMA mode enabled by default, Broadcom 43xx support, a DOS boot profile, and NTFS write support." Read the release announcement and notes for more information.

QiLinux 2.0

Davide Madrisan announced the availability of QiLinux 2.0: "The QiLinux team is pleased to announce the availability of QiLinux 2.0 (Supernova). QiLinux is an easy-to-use distribution built from scratch in Italy for desktop and server systems, designed for non-technical users. The highlights of this release include: latest developments of the Linux desktop, an upgrade to KDE 3.5.3, koffice 1.5.2, amarok 1.4.1 and to the current version of Linux kernel, proprietary ATI and NVIDIA video drivers, several fixes and feature enhancements."

We are pleased to announce that the DistroWatch July 2006 donation has been awarded to Blender Foundation (US$500.00). A piece of software that doesn't need much introduction, Blender is popular "open source software for 3D modelling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. Available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License."

We received an email from Ton Roosendaal shortly after sending the donation: "Wow, that's a real generous contribution! Thanks a lot, -Ton-."

While on the subject of donations, it is only appropriate to comment on an issue that arose recently. As a result of the financial difficulties experienced by the founder and lead developer of Symphony OS, many readers emailed us with a suggestion to award a donation to the said project. Unfortunately for Ryan Quinn, we don't believe that giving money to a project that can't stand on its own is a wise idea. The DistroWatch donations programme was launched with a goal to help well-established open source projects to get better hardware or to create better infrastructure for their project - not to pay a developer's utility bills! After all, if a project cannot stand on its own, a single donation won't rescue it - it will just delay the inevitable end. Of course, Symphony OS is a worthwhile project and we would like to see it overcome its current financial difficulties. If you enjoy it, then by all means send Ryan a donation.

As always, the monthly donations programme is a joint initiative between DistroWatch, which allocates 10% of its advertising revenue, and three online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software - LinuxISO.co.uk and LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com. The three CD/DVD vendors contributed US$50.00 each towards this month's donation to Blender.

This is the PayPal receipt for the donation to Blender Foundation:

Dear DistroWatch.com,
This email confirms that you have paid Blender Foundation $500.00 USD using PayPal.

------------------------------
Payment Details:
------------------------------
Transaction ID: 36632439M92517148
Item Price: $500.00 USD
Item/Product Name: Blender Foundation
Item/Product Number: 0001
Buyer: DistroWatch.com
Message: This is a donation by DistroWatch.com as part of our programme to offer financial support to open source software projects. Keep up the good work!

Here is the list of projects that received a DistroWatch donation since the launch of the programme:

Since the launch of the DistroWatch Donations Programme in March 2004, we have donated a total of US$9,300 to various open source software projects.

* * * * *

New distributions added to waiting list

Dubuntu. Dubuntu is a Chinese GNU/Linux operating system based on Ubuntu. The goal of this new distribution is to provide a Linux environment focused on software development, with a nice desktop environment.

Sectoo Linux. Sectoo Linux is a Linux distribution aimed at helping people with tasks related to network security. In the form of a live CD based on Gentoo Linux, you will be able to achieve tasks such as port scanning, packet sniffing, OS fingerprinting and intrusion detection.

I would like to use this opportunity to thank Dr W T Zhu for maintaining the DistroWatch news section and Susan Linton for compiling DistroWatch Weekly during the past three weeks. Based on your feedback, they seem to have done a marvellous job and the only complaint I received during that time was our failure to publish the SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 release announcement. Please rest assured that this was not intentional, but rather it happened as a result of a miscommunication. (We certainly have nothing against Novell - especially since we know that the company's CEO reads DistroWatch - see the last answer for a proof).

And that concludes our latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next issue will be published on Monday, 14 August 2006. Until then,